Vaad Lelmi Leaders Testify at Partition Hearing

The executive committee of the Palestine Jewish National Council (Vaad Leumi) testified today in camera before Britain’s Palestine Partition Commission.

Menachem M. Ussishkin, president of the Jewish National Fund and leader of the Zionist opponents to the partition plan, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he would testify before the commission if he was given a free hand to present his views. He declared that “if partition is forced through, it will be a calamity for Zionism, Palestine and the Jews throughout the world.”

Mr. Ussishkin will testify, he said, if he is allowed to affirm historic Jewish rights under the mandate to settle in the whole of Palestine, to present evidence on the feasibility of continuing the mandate and to prove that partition is inequitable and impracticable. The political department of the Jewish Agency opposes his presenting the third point.